


strawberries 'n' chocolate

by softestrichie



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Autistic Richie Tozier, First Kiss, M/M, god i adore them, they're so awkward and piney
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 06:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18068072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestrichie/pseuds/softestrichie
Summary: richie and eddie are walking on eggshells. eddie thinks a kiss might just do it all away.





	strawberries 'n' chocolate

**Author's Note:**

> a oneshot from my tumblr! for a request of 'why did you do that?' / 'i don't know, i just really wanted to kiss you'

Eddie thinks that Richie’s mouth would maybe taste like pick ‘n’ mix, and other times Coca Cola, and that it would have ulcers the size of gumballs up and down the bottom lip; he thinks maybe it’d be like kissing a glass-screened, movie theatre sugar buffet. All chewed up and swollen and chapped and lovely.

“Just a teeny tiny kiss,” he whispers every night, to those funny, lucky criss-cross charms his mamma taped to the wall. “Just one, before I die.” 

He’s thought about that wonky mouth when he was tiny, even; when Richie would curl it up all love-heart shaped to blow bubbles on the way home from school, and stretch it to giggle at how fast and bright they popped again. Eddie would think about giving it teeny tiny birdie kisses, like the ones he fluttered at his mamma from ‘round the back of her pink, paisley chair at bedtime, back then. Think about tapping it with the pale side of his thumb. And when he got a little bit older, past fourteen at least, he thought about pressing something more loving, and long, and honey-flavoured ‘gainst Richie Tozier’s lips - maybe having a little explore of ‘em with the tip of his tongue, or seeing how long they’ll stay locked in between his own. A daydream, covered in cuts and fat-free banana cake on Eddie’s sixteenth birthday. Only a week from then, ‘til they’re finally, finally within the reach of his pinky fingers, those lips; ‘til Eddie will finally be able to tell you that Richie Tozier’s mouth tickles worse than mohair, and tastes just like jubilee tomatoes.

They’re sitting at the far end of the barrens, today, when it happens. Where the jack pine trees thatch thicker than ever and the stream’s all skinny and shallow; ice cream cones running down their wrists, toes skirting the water and the curves of each other’s. “…And then sometimes there’s orange fish and blue fish…and…even teeny purply ones,” Eddie’s chittering, temple brushing Richie’s shoulder and cheeks like pink angel-cake. Dangerous. “They’re the shyest. They’ll come and kiss your feet if you’re quiet.”

Richie turns to look at him in one, curly twitch of his neck that Eddie sometimes thinks is a little bit of a force of nature. How he tip-taps his fingers or jogs his knees or draws his shoulders up right ‘round the lobes of his ears, s’all more like leaf-tails peaking out of soil, than a teenage boy’s restless bones, more like stones in a stream; there is so much earth in Richie Tozier. So much dirt and green and aching, groaning love - even when he’s got that god-awful yellow sun-hat on, like today, the one his mom makes him wear in August to protect the skin on his nose. A pink cast ‘round his wrist from falling tummy-first off a vaulting box in gym, a drawing of a slug penned into the top of it, and a little bit of snot under his nose. Heaven, Eddie thinks. 

“They’d better stay away from me, then, me ‘n’ my feet. Got a verruca, little banana,” comes his candy-necklace voice. “Mom said I’ll hafta wear funny rubber socks next time I go swimming so it doesn’t fall off in there and contaminate the whole of Derry.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. That’s really vile.”

“Yeah? You into it?!”

They do a lot of sitting down without much talking, nowadays; just letting the very outer crooks of their knees brush against each other, and watching, and humming, and laying. Those are the times when kissing Richie is all Eddie can manage to think about at all - even worse, when they touch. When they’re somewhere just quiet and pink enough that it barely even counts. When all the growth spurts and hairy shins and funny, dirty dreams that seem to have been knitting a little bitta tension between them for the last three years are all wound back into dust, for a single, gentle, lace of the fingers in the dark. Silent, and brutally embarrassed, but holding hands; Eddie wonders if now is maybe one of those times, as his shy fingers pull at the ditch of Richie’s wrist and he asks,

“You gonna eat your ice cream yet?”

Richie shakes his head, watching Eddie’s chin with deep interest. Eddie knows Richie doesn’t mean anything when he stares; the Toziers tell him very gently when he’s ‘round theirs that it’s just a harmless itty bit of his ‘condition’, but Eddie prefers it as just a harmless bit of his soul. He likes Richie’s stares and funny, whining noises, and flappy fingers. He likes all of him. “You can have some of it if you want, tummy’s a bit queasy. And you’re the birthday-baby!”

“Birthday was last week, Richie,” Eddie giggles. Temple crooks a little closer.

“I don’t care. I think it should all be special, cake everyday, like the week after Christmas where you just sit around and nap and eat a lot of cold ham, even though it’s long gone.”

It is now becoming the most teeniest, tiniest bit apparent that Richie is not staring at Eddie’s chin. At least not anymore; eyes gone wonky and fishy over the heat of the last few seconds and are now, very neatly, planted on his bottom lip. Eddie thinks his tummy’s ‘boutta come falling out of his tush, when he sees it - feels his fingers still around that wrist and all the bones in ‘em start to reel. This happens most days, actually; a little pause, a brush of knees, a funny look. Always has the pair of them stock still and achy as they try ‘n’ work out what to do about it. 

“I just usually eat m’mom’s chocolates…she’s vegetarian, so…” Eddie says very faintly. “Whatcha doing?” 

Richie shifts his weight from left to right, ice cream running down so thick and far it’s almost reached his elbow. He’s wearing a t shirt, even though he says he hates doing it nowadays ‘cause his arms are covered in teeny tiny goose-pimples and rashes and eczema, a green one with a picture of a smiley-faced grizzly bear over the chest. Eddie told him earlier that he thought that was ultra brave, and that he liked the picture. Sent Richie’s cheeks bright as the sunshine. 

“You got a little bit of…” Richie touches his own lip, for Eddie to copy. Trying to tell him there’s a little blot of something there. Eddie skates his fingers ‘round his mouth at top speed. 

“There’s nothing, you goose.”

“Sure is. Strawberry. Gotta lick it.”

The taller boy leans forward at this point, further and faster than the pair of them can cope with for a moment - faster than anything human can really cut through a tension like this. Usually hafta take it in slow-mo when their hips bump in the corridors, eyes catch all heart-shaped from opposite sides of the science classroom. And, to make matters about eight-million times worse, the wonky hand Richie uses just now to point is the one absolutely covered in dilapidated chocolate ice cream, sending a great, big slug of it melting all over Eddie’s Cupid’s bow - Oh, Jesus Christ, Eddie draws back with a groan. 

“Aye, why did you do that?!” He squeaks. 

Richie gives a little wince at his own clumsiness, mopping his wrist up on the stiff, print of that grinning bear’s face to get the rest of the cream off. He drops his things all over the floor everyday, at school; pencils under the cracks of his desk, lunch at the foot of his locker. Sometimes the snide-faced boys in their grade try and snatch it all up before he can bend down and fill his hands again, just to drive him half mad. Just to giggle when Richie gets down on his knees and starts breathing funny ‘cause he can’t find that one, very specific green fountain pen he’d wanted to use in English later, the third cookie he was so sure he’d tucked in his box last night; Eddie thinks he’d hit those boys very hard if he was strong enough. 

“I don’t know…I’m not sure, I…” Richie struggles. Eddie wonders for a moment if he shouldn’t have scolded him at all; wonders if he’s about to go into one of his big, long, melodramatic mumbles about how it’s ‘cause he’s just so pea-brained and stupid and silly, and his motor skills are bad, or something similar. Wonders if he should just plug that chocolate ice cream right up into the boy’s mouth, to save the pair of them the trouble. But when Richie blinks and draws up that wrist again, cheeks all jittery, he doesn’t say anything like that. No, he just curves his felt tip lips right open, goes all cross-eyed and says very shyly,

“I don’t know, I just really wanted to kiss you.”

Oh, holy moley. 

Eddie thinks his eyes are twisting in on themselves too, as he copies that funny little blink; as he takes in the crooks of Richie’s face, and replays it five or six more times just to know it wasn’t the breeze, just to know he hadn’t gotten so sweaty and desperate for something, anything, that his brain had delivered it to him purely outta pity. Makes to do a little triple-check, “pardon?”, but it’s barely come out before the pair of them are leaning in like swans, and he’s given up entirely on being certain. _If it’s a daydream, so be it,_ Eddie thinks as Richie’s nose flutters closer, and it all goes kaleidoscope-coloured. _It’ll be my favourite._

And so they kiss, covered in chocolate ice cream. S’only a teeny tiny, butterfly breath of one, as Richie’s lips come in shyer than a schoolgirl and he pulls away after half a second, heavy eyes shooting Eddie a terrified little look. But Eddie thinks that, after eight dizzy, pink years of watching and waiting and wondering and wincing, he can’t be anything close to scared anymore, and pulls that curly boy of his dreams right back in. Pulls him in to tell him ‘bout all those coloured pictures of him that live on the backs of the eyelids, all the night he’s sat up in bed with his cheeks in his hands just praying that Richie Tozier’d somehow fall in right next to him, with a single float of the lips. Like sun in a stream, that’s how they move. And he knows it’s all just fine when Richie’s spidery, sticky hands come up to cup ‘round the underside of his jaw; when the muscles in his shoulders go nice and loose and he holds Eddie with all that gracelessness never so far away. 

Eddie hears against the curves of his own, desperate lips, as his hands travel up gingerly into Richie’s heat-crazy hair, a teeny tiny whisper of, “thank you.” One that he can only giggle at, giggle at with the lightest little heart in the world, and repeat, under his breath, nothing short of a million times. He is grateful, really; for chocolate ice cream, and that sun-hat ticklin’ his ears, and Richie Tozier, in all his silly glory. He is grateful to know love like this. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr - lovedrichie  
> instagram - pixielesbian


End file.
